Some govs succeed with softer touch

To judge from the headlines, the 2010 class of GOP governors — as in Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, Ohio’s John Kasich and Florida’s Rick Scott — ushered in an era of radical changes achieved through confrontational politics that have also resulted in startlingly low poll ratings and civil wars with their state legislatures.

But a look toward the West finds some rookie GOP state leaders — New Mexico’s Susana Martinez and Nevada’s Brian Sandoval in particular — who have accomplished some of the same conservative policy goals as their higher-profile counterparts with a fraction of the backlash, and it is their example that may prove more useful to 2012 Republican gubernatorial hopefuls.

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There are extenuating circumstances; Martinez and Sandoval were forced by Democratic legislatures into the sorts of compromises of principle and practices that are anathema to the conservative movement that energized last November’s midterms. After an adverse court ruling, Sandoval even raised taxes.

But the two governors also won, to different degrees, dramatic victories on the core issue of education reform, infuriating teachers’ unions and cutting spending without alienating parents. And while governors like Walker and Kasich have emerged as national conservative and Republican celebrities — and are, according to public polling, three of the four least popular of the new class of governors — Sandoval and Martinez have fought to keep their heads down and the ideological stakes low. In a nation clamoring for compromise and political civility, theirs is a model to watch.

“That’s where we sort of lost our way,” said Martinez, asked about the confrontational, ideological conservatism of the new wave of Republican leaders. “I am a conservative but we shouldn’t allow single words to really define us.”

Sandoval, too, avoids talking in ideological or partisan terms, which his aides and advisers see as crucial to his good relations with voters and legislators.

“The governors who are in trouble are those who have drawn a hard line in the sand and are unwilling to yield,” said Pete Ernaut, one of Sandoval’s closest confidants. “Though he may have entered the legislative session looking like a hard-nosed conservative, he exited the session as a practical moderate.”

Sandoval and Martinez aren’t the only new governors having a good year. On the Democratic side, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has emerged as the most popular new governor in the country with an agenda that has pleased conservatives with spending cuts and liberals with a high-profile gay marriage victory. Also in the West, Colorado’s John Hickenlooper has followed a similar centrist model as Martinez and Sandoval, clashing at times with labor and Democratic allies but appearing to secure his strength with the public and the legislature.